Business Standard

Tuesday, January 07, 2025 | 03:57 AM ISTEN Hindi

Notification Icon
userprofile IconSearch

The man-god dynamic

Accidental Gods meanders at times, delineating some connections that are less plausible than others

Book Cover
Premium

Book Cover (Accidental Gods: On Men Unwittingly Turned Divine)

Jennifer Szalai | NYT
Accidental Gods: On Men Unwittingly Turned Divine
Author: Anna Della Subin
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Price: $35
Pages:462

You might think that being worshipped as a god would be the ultimate dream come true — all that power and pageantry and extravagant adoration. But as I learned from Anna Della Subin’s  Accidental Gods,what’s even more striking than the surprising frequency with which mortal men have been “unwittingly turned divine” is how often they tried to disavow their newfound exaltation.

“I am not God” was a sentence that Gandhi found himself saying again and again. During Jawaharlal Nehru’s political ascent in the 1930s, the man who would become

What you get on BS Premium?

  • Unlock 30+ premium stories daily hand-picked by our editors, across devices on browser and app.
  • Pick your 5 favourite companies, get a daily email with all news updates on them.
  • Full access to our intuitive epaper - clip, save, share articles from any device; newspaper archives from 2006.
  • Preferential invites to Business Standard events.
  • Curated newsletters on markets, personal finance, policy & politics, start-ups, technology, and more.
VIEW ALL FAQs

Need More Information - write to us at assist@bsmail.in